Rick Santorum: GOP should boost workers

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum called Friday on Republicans to shift their focus more toward helping families and workers, saying that the GOP is at a “crisis point” in its history.

Santorum, a 2012 presidential candidate who may run again in 2016, told attendees at the annual Road to Majority conference of Christian conservatives that the Republican Party’s “country club,” pro-business values no longer reflected the priorities of ordinary Americans.

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“We are a party, we are a movement that continues to focus on certain issues that I believe are, well let’s just say, not as relevant to average Americans as they used to be,” said Santorum, who is known for his staunch social conservatism, but has been striking populist tones in recent months.

On Friday, he said that blue-collar conservatives “are the future of America.”

He argued that the GOP needs to advocate for what he called the country’s most basic economic units, families, by promoting reinvestment in American manufacturing and reforming welfare programs.

The latter, he said, encourages people to avoid marriage.

“We need to have an agenda that speaks across the economic spectrum. We need to be the party of the worker, not just of the business,” Santorum said, drawing applause from the crowd of several hundred at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. “We need to be a movement that says, we want to make things in America.”

Santorum was the first major speaker of a morning agenda that features Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, all potential GOP presidential candidates. Two other potential 2016ers, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, addressed the gathering on Thursday.

The conference, sponsored by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, is an annual policy and strategy summit.